A RICH TAPESTRY OF HISTORY

Steve Stanek. Special to the TribuneCHICAGO TRIBUNE

A midwinter evening. Swirls of snow dance across the highway and flash in the car's headlight beams, prelude to a Siberian Express blowing down from the Dakotas. It's a good night to be headed to Richmond and Hazel Rekenthaler's house, where, this evening, the living room fireplace throws a warm yellow glow and the television transmits the excited voices of Johnny "Red" Kerr and Wayne Larrivee and images of Michael, Scottie and Phil.

It's a good night to be invited into the Rekenthaler house, which exudes warmth and comfort, as you'd expect from the home of one of the area's best quiltmakers. After all, quilts are first and foremost objects of warmth and comfort, layers of fabric meant to be snuggled under on a cold night. It takes a warm person to devote a large portion of her life to such objects--try to imagine Leona Helmsley in a quiet corner of her mansion, contentedly sewing quilts--and after 44 years in her house, Rekenthaler's character comes through in the decorating, as it does in the making of her quilts.

"Quilting is really the oldest of the antique arts," says Rekenthaler, a 66-year-old woman who is as much historian as she is quilter. "It's a way of recording history. That's one of the things I find exciting about quilting: learning the stories of the women who made the quilts, what they did and how they did it."

As her friend of 20 years, Lorraine Zarnstorff of rural Richmond, said of Rekenthaler: "Hazel can talk to just about anybody and somehow bring quilts into the conversation. Maybe the person's grandmother made quilts, or maybe the person had a quilt that had been handed down to her. Somehow, Hazel finds that out."

Rekenthaler has been a professional quilter who has worked on commission and sold works to art galleries. She has also taught quilting to others. She has all but stopped quilting professionally, content to make quilts as wedding presents for her children, gifts for grandchildren or for other special people in her life. But she's still researching the histories of antique quilts, which she collects, and sharing her research with others, most recently at a "bed turning" at Richmond's Memorial Hall.

At the bed turning, she laid antique quilts one atop the other and turned them back one at a time to give each quilt's history and discuss the significance of the patterns and the life of the person who made it.

Where most people see patterns and fabric, Rekenthaler may see the fight against slavery. Among her stories is one about the Underground Railroad of the mid-1800s. This network of safe houses for escaped slaves used quilts to mark escape routes.

"We had slaves coming through here," Rekenthaler said. "If a person hung a quilt on a line outside, that would be a map for the slaves. If the quilt had a certain black square in it, that meant this was a safe house. Most people didn't think anything of the black square. But to the slaves and to the people up here who were helping them, they knew what that black square meant."

She also may see the Civil War, which put an end to slavery. She collects antique quilts and recently gave the McHenry County Historical Society in Union one made entirely of fabric that had been cut from the uniforms of Civil War soldiers.

Or she may see a quilt as a symbol of the fight to give women equal voting rights with men, recounting how the Suffragette Movement was sustained in part by quilting guilds whose members would discuss politics as they stitched together their quilts.

"The women at those quilting bees accomplished a lot," Rekenthaler said. "Now people are making the AIDS quilt, so we're still recording history and involved in issues."

Rekenthaler belongs to the 300-member North Suburban Quilting Guild and is a member of a local quilting group she named The Baltimore Snobs to poke fun at a group of women from Baltimore who developed an intricate applique technique about 100 years ago. Rekenthaler and several friends had been studying the technique, which she described as "something for the leisured rich," and had so much fun they kept on meeting monthly at one another's houses after the class ended. They've been doing it since 1993.

Rekenthaler's great-grandmother--"a Mennonite lady who always quilted," she recalled--sparked her interest in quilting. Rekenthaler started quilting professionally and teaching about 25 years ago. Her class at McHenry County College in Crystal Lake then was as much about the history of quilting as the making of quilts.

"I wanted people to know the history of what they were doing," she said. "I wanted the students to know about the women who made quilts and worked hard to get to this point of freedom and be a little more on their own."

Many quilts take up to a year to make, so a quilt can become a labor of love and an object of affection. "I get done with one and sometimes have a hard time parting with," Rekenthaler said with a laugh. "You put so much into it, it's hard to let go."

Quilts received as gifts also can become objects of affection for recipients, which is why Rekenthaler has sometimes helped people restore their favorite quilts. "I enjoy doing these things that I restore for people, not because of the work, but because of the looks on their faces when they get their quilts back," she said.

She recalled one particular restoration. "One woman brought me a quilt that was little more than a rag and asked if I could make a baby quilt out of it, because it had meant a lot to her," she said. "I called her back and said, 'I think I may be able to restore it.' "

Rekenthaler rummaged through the antique fabrics she collects and found ones to match. Then she dyed them the proper colors and set to work sewing them onto the quilt. When the woman saw her restored quilt, she cried.

"She said, `I slept under this on the floor of my grandmother's house. It means so much to me, and I still have it,' " Rekenthaler said. "I thought to myself, `Gee, it was worth it.' I probably made 5 cents an hour, but it was worth it to see the look on her face. There's a lot of love and thought and time that goes into making a fine quilt, and there's so much history and so many memories wrapped up in them."

But as she has entered retirement, Rekenthaler is thinking most of all of her family's future need for quilts. "I have five grandchildren, and I've got to get started on their wedding quilts. They expect it," she said with a laugh.